Book Description

Excerpt from Philadelphia and Its Environs: A Guide to the City and Surroundings Of the wider streets of Philadelphia, the leading north and south example is Broad Street, one hundred and thirteen feet wide, and opened for a length of Some twelve miles. It is paved through sev eral miles of its length with sheet asphaltum, and affords a magnifi cent avenue for carriages and processions. East and west through the centre Of the city runs Market Street, one hundred feet wide and six miles long, its eastern portion being devoted to heavy wholesale business. Of the remaining wide avenues may be named Spring Garden Street, lined with handsome residences, and the favorite southern driveway to the Park; Fairmount, Girard, and Columbia Avenues; and Diamond Street, the principal northern carriage-road to the Park. Of the business streets, Chestnut and Eighth Streets stand first in retail trade, while Second Street is said to enjoy the distinction of being the longest street continuously lined with stores in the world. The rectangular character of the streets is broken by a few streets which run diagonally, and there has recently been placed on the city plan a diagonal Boulevard, one hundred and sixty feet in width, to run from the City Hall to Fairmount Park, and designed to be lined with buildings Of imposing architecture, and to form an avenue Of exceptional beauty. Nearly every important street has its passenger railway - horse or cable - modes of propulsion, which are likely soon to be supplanted by electric motors. The total length of street railway is over three hundred miles. The ease of access which this gives to the centre Of the city is added to by the railroads, which now run by elevated tracks to the heart of the business section, giving easy and rapid access from the suburban districts to the vicinity of the City Hall. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.